It was bad enough when Phoebe knew she was eating kale. A single taste, no matter how her boyfriend prepared it, confirmed her aversion.
Stir fried? Vile.
Roasted? Equally so.
Discovering her boyfriend had slipped some into the brownies she raved about? That was a line that couldn’t be uncrossed.
Iain Young can’t remember the last time he ate kale, and he’d like to keep it that way.
Fog surrounds our seaside home and fills my father’s mind. He doesn’t understand that I alone ward off the nursing home.
He tries to escape to his army camp. I follow his footprints to the water. A knot cramps my stomach.
Dropping to my knees, I think he’s calling me.
Ann Zimmerman lives with her wife and 2 cats in Colorado, where she writes, hikes, skis, golfs, enjoys photography and grandchildren. See more at annzimmermanblog.wordpress.com.
Panicked screams rang out, but Mylo didn’t register them. He took another bucket from the human chain and poured it onto the flames swallowing the barn. Destruction and chaos enveloped them. Mylo glanced at his tiny pet and had no regrets.
No one ever said it’d be easy breeding dragons.
Beth Gaydon is a work-from-home mom in Tennessee. She raises dogs, but they rarely set the barn on fire.
Grandpa put his old couch on the driveway and added a huge sign, propped up on the faded paisley cushions:
Free! Please take!
Two days later, the couch hadn’t moved and the forecast threatened rain. Grandpa changed the sign:
Couch: $100
In less than an hour, the couch had vanished.
Mark Farley writes novels, flash fiction and the occasional poem.
“Check under the bed.”
“Nope. Maybe it’s in the dryer.”
“I hope not.”
“It wasn’t there. Where else could it be?”
“I don’t even know. The yard?”
My wife was right. There, playing by our curbside mailbox, sat my toddler niece, proving how woefully unprepared we were to be parents.
Scott is an author and writer living in DFW, Texas, with his wife and their two boys. In his spare time he collects antique cameras. He has never intentionally misplaced a child, for the record.
The story of the week for April 9 to 13 is…
Bad Seed by Melanie Cranenburgh
It annoys me, a little, that my gripes are never quite as gripey as yours.
My woes aren’t as woeful. My worries can’t compare.
My annoyances not annoying enough.
You win. You are the Queen of Whining. You get to wear the crown.
About which you, no doubt, will complain.
Candace Kubinec posts her stories at storydribbles.wordpress.com and her poetry at rhymeswithbug.com.
Effie tells me she’s uploading herself to the cloud. “It’s for work.”
“That’s ridiculous. You’ll be like a bot.”
She tells me our minds are the future; our bodies are too slow.
I take her slow hand and say I love her.
She says she’ll send me a meme. :-\
Michael Mau wrote this story.
She was a girl. Big smile, lots of friends, big demands, bigger expectations.
She went to see the world to find herself. She had to fight to keep that smile big, make new friends, reduce her needs and realise that dreams are not always real.
She is a woman now.
Alidiane is an English language student in Dublin, Ireland. Originally, she’s from Brazil.
He had always dreamed of having a vegetable garden. A place where tomatoes, beans and corn could be kissed by the sun and caressed by the rains.
Meticulously, he weeded and watered, hoed and harvested, until the loudspeaker murdered his tellurian bliss: Inmate B18763… report to the Exercise Yard, immediately!
If killing plants was a crime, Melanie would have been incarcerated for the term of her natural life.